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[francophone]

Hello,
As a tenured literature prof whose work focuses on French-English relations and translation, I've often thought it would be nice to go back and live in France, for both professional and personal reasons; but I haven't done more than short visits (a month here, 3 weeks there) since I was a student.  Can anyone give advice or direction about how to go about working in France, Belgium, francophone or anglophone Switzerland, Luxembourg? Are there web sites for employment opportunities, as for Canada, US, & UK?  What are the relative benefits and problems? Closed to foreigners? Thanks in advance for your opinions--
Francophone/phile

[qe2]

I'm a belgian, who left the country because of the narrow-mindedness of many belgian universities: if you stick around long enough, you might get a job, and the most qualified people leave the country (noticed the number of belgians having good positions, but outside belgium?). The market is quite closed, but things are changing in a positive sense. There is no comprehensive website (if you're too open about your vacancies, you might get good candidates applying, which makes it difficult to tenure the slightly below average people who have been around for years at your dept). So you will have to consult University websites individually. We don't have many francophone universities, so that's easy:

UCL  :   http://www.uclouvain.be/emploi.html         
ULg :   http://www.ulg.ac.be/emploi/               
FUNDP:    http://www.fundp.ac.be/institution/emploi/offres/    
ULB: http://www.ulb.ac.be/docs/greffe/vacances/academique/index.html

on the plus side: 1) things have changed a lot over the past decade, and continue to do so. 2) standard of living is quite good in Belgium, with good food, great public transport, and affordable housing, with some exceptions (Leuven, Brussels)

[workedinbelgium]

Having worked as a postdoc at ULB I'd agree with the above - they are beginning just occasionally to appoint people who didn't do all their degrees there but in the humanities non-Belgians are still a rarity. But what I would suggest is trying to make some contacts in Belgium as their funding council FNRS has a scheme to sponsor visiting professors so you could go for 6-12 months, see how you liked it etc if you could get someone to successfully sponsor you.
Luxembourg - I heard that they were extending their one year university college (students then have to study abroad) to be a proper university but I really wouldn't reccommend it for meaningful research.
France - next to impossible to get into a permanent post if you are a) not French and b) didn't do your PhD there BUT again like Belgium there are often interesting shorter term possibilities. There's lots of information and links at www.emploi-scientifique.info
Switzerland - I have the impression that it has a more open academic job market than the others. A lot get posted at www.telejob.ch, others can be found occasionally on www.academics.de and www.jobs.ac.uk

Bonne chance!

[merci bien]

This is good information---je vous remercie tous!